Parable of the Talents

near Pelican Bay that Layla volunteered at the Pelican Bay nursery. It was Layla who brought Kayce and me together. Kayce didn't really want me. I was a big, dark-skinned, solemn baby, and she didn't like my looks. 'She was a grim, stone-faced little thing,' I heard her say later to her friends. 'And she was as plain as a stone. I was afraid for her—afraid that if I didn't take her, no one would.'

Both Kayce and Layla believed it was the duty of good Christian Americans to give homes to the many orphaned children from squatter settlements and heathen cults. If one couldn't be an Asha Vere, rescuing all sorts of people, one could at least rescue one or two unfortunate children and raise them properly.

Five months after Layla introduced her daughter to me, the Alexanders adopted me. I didn't exactly become their daughter, but they meant to do their duty—to raise me prop­erly and save me from whatever depraved existence I might have had with my biological parents.

from The Journals of Lauren Oya Olamina

sunday, december 4, 2033

They have begun to let us alone more on Sundays after ser­vices. I suppose they're tired of using up their own Sundays to lash us into memorizing chapters of the Bible. After five or six hours of services and a meal of boiled vegetables, we are told to rest in our quarters and thank God for his good­ness to us.

We aren't permitted to do anything. To do anything other than Bible study would be, in their view, 'work,' and a vio­lation of the Fourth Commandment. We're to sit still, not speak, not repair our clothing or our shoes—we're all in rags since all but two sets per person of our clothing have been confiscated. We're allowed to read the Bible, pray, and sleep. If we're caught doing anything more than that, we're lashed.

Of course, the moment we're left alone, we do as we like. We hold whispered conversations, we clean and repair our things as best we can, we share information. And I write. Only on Sundays can we do these things in daylight.

We're permitted no electric light and no oil lamps, so we have only the window for light. During the week, it's dark when we get up and dark when we're shut in to sleep. Dur­ing the week, we are machines—or domestic animals.

The only conveniences we're permitted are a galvanized bucket which we must all use as a toilet and a 20-liter plas­tic bottle of water fitted with a cheap plastic siphon pump. We each have one plastic bowl from which we both eat and drink. It's odd about the bowls. They're bright shades of blue, red, yellow, orange, and green. They're the only colorful things in our prison room—bright, cheerful lies. They're what you see first when you walk in. Mary Sulli­van calls them our dog dishes. We hate them, but we use them. What choice do we have? Our only 'legal' individ­ual possessions are our bowls, our clothing, our blankets— one each—and our Camp Christian-issued paper King James Bibles.

On Sundays when we're fortunate enough to be let alone early, I take out paper and pencil and use my Bible as a desk.

My writing is a way for me to remind myself that I am human, that God is Change, and that I will escape this place. As irrational as the feeling may be, my writing still comforts me.

Other people find other comforts. Mary Sullivan and Allie combine their blankets and make love to one another late at night. It comforts them. Their sleeping place is next to mine, and I hear them at it. They aren't the only ones who do it, but they're the only pair so far that stays together.

'Do we disgust you?' Mary Sullivan whispered to me one morning with characteristic bluntness. We had been awakened later than usual and we could just see each other in the half-light. I could see Mary sitting up beside a still-sleeping Allie.

I looked at her, surprised. She's a tall woman—almost my size—angular and bony, but with an interesting-looking, ex­pressive face. She looked as though she had always had plenty of hard, physical work to do, but not always enough to eat. 'Do you love my friend?' I asked her.

She blinked, drew back as though she was about to tell me to mind my own business or to go to hell. But after a mo­ment, she said in her harsh voice, 'Of course I do!'

I managed a smile, although I don't know whether she could see it, and I nodded. 'Then be good to one another,' I said. 'And if there's trouble, you and your sisters stand with us, with Earthseed.' We're the strongest single group among the prisoners. The Sullivans and the Gamas have tended to group themselves with us, anyway, although nothing had been said. Well, now I've said something, at least to Mary Sullivan.

After a moment, she nodded, unsmiling. She wasn't a woman who smiled often.

I worry that someone will break ranks and report Allie and Mary, but so far, no one has reported anyone for anything, al­though our 'teachers' keep inviting us to report one another's sins. There has been trouble now and then. Squatter-camp women have gotten into fights over